Way back in February of 2007, I wrote of an announcement by General Electric that they were developing an energy efficient incandescent light bulb. I speculated that they were motivated by a proposed California law to outlaw the incandescent. Later on, in March, I noted that it wasn’t just California, but that such legislation was coming down the pipes in several nation states. G.E. were facing a global phenomenon.

In the U.S., federal legislation was passed in the same year, 2007, effectively banning the old incandescent. Hooray! Everybody won — even G.E., who could continue selling the bulbs in the more energy efficient form they were developing.

Interestingly, in a recent article in The Washington Post, no mention is made of more efficient incandescents. The story is centred on the closing of a G.E. plant in Winchester, Virginia, and the jobs that will be lost. Compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) will not take up the slack, at least not for the employees there. G.E. will continue to sell CFLs, but for the foreseeable future they will all be made in China. Because their manufacture is more labour intensive, U.S. manufacture would be less profitable.

This could reflect a worrying trend. The Post quotes President Obama:

See, when folks lift up the hoods on the cars of the future, I want them to see engines stamped “Made in America,” Obama said in an Aug. 16 speech at a Wisconsin plant. “When new batteries to store solar power come off the line, I want to see printed on the side, “Made in America.” When new technologies are developed and new industries are formed, I want them made right here in America. That’s what we’re fighting for.

What Obama wants and what corporations are willing to pay for may be two entirely different things, and “newness” appears to be a disadvantage, if the case of the Virginia light bulb factory is any indicator.

The U.S. has no monopoly on green technology. Expect to see more of the “Made in China” label whether you want to or not, and don’t expect to see manufacturing jobs in the former industrial nations of the West recover due to some Green Renaissance. It’s just too labour intensive to do here. But then, isn’t just about everything?

Still no sexbots. Perhaps they’ll be one of those techs like videophones — featured in scifi, but, once the technology is actually available, not really generating the interest scifi authors anticipated. Or perhaps it’s economic. Maybe there are some amazing million dollar sexbot prototypes even now hidden away in labs in Japan or somewhere, just waiting for the cost of their components to decline, or for cheaper methods of manufacture.

This year I think I’ll play it conservatively with regard to predictions. 2009 will look pretty much like 2008. Perhaps processors will be a little faster, maybe more cores available in more affordable chips. The one striking thing, which isn’t exactly new but which we should expect to see more of, is an emphasis on energy efficiency, at both the consumer and pro levels. Energy efficiency could mean longer battery life for consumers in their various electronic gizmos, while for business it translates to lower energy costs for server rooms — less power, less heat, less air conditioning, less cost. The PR benefit to “going green” is incidental; there are real bottom line cost benefits to energy efficiency.

Some prognosticators might be tempted to declare 2009 the year of some iPhone killer, but that would be nonsense. Apple makes lovely bits of hardware that have always been able to hold their own within their sector of the market, namely design-conscious people who don’t mind being milked on price. Apple will lose a bit of market share as other players enter the touch screen phone market, but one has to remember that if the market had been established by another company’s product and then Apple came out with the iPhone, Apple fans would still have lined up to get one. Steve Jobs has a captive audience that would buy his excrement if it was nicely packaged and called iShit.

That said, Nokia is poised to challenge Apple in the touch screen phone market with its N97.

And while it’s traditional to predict that the coming year will be the year of Linux on the desktop, this year let’s be more modest and predict that 2009 will be the year of Linux on the netbook. Netbooks, if you haven’t heard, are very small and affordable laptops. Arguably the machine which lit a fire under this product category was the OLPC XO, followed by the eee pc, and others like the Asus Aspire One.

While the emergence of netbooks caught Microsoft off guard, the company is now competing aggressively and pushing Windows on netbooks any way they can. Obviously, netbooks having more limited processor power and memory, Vista is not an option, so Microsoft has extended the end of life of XP Home until June 30th, 2010.

You’d think Linux could eat Microsoft’s lunch, given that the netbook market is one of limited hardware resources and retail price. The regular cost of Windows XP is almost as much as a cheap netbook itself. But herein we see one of Linux’s weaknesses, namely the lack of a well financed, central head office that can do battle in a swift and organized way. When Microsoft’s interests are threatened, Lord Balmer sends forth the nine riders on their black horses who visit every corner of Middle Earth doing whatever it takes to keep Windows dominant, practically giving it away where necessary. If Linux has a chance to dominate here, and I think it does, it’s not only because it’s the superior choice for a low-cost, stripped-down machine, but also because companies like Asus and Acer offer it as an option. Seriously, simple as that.

A great many people still have no idea that Linux exists as an option on the PC — like the school teacher who discovered students playing with it and became concerned that they were up to no good. She emailed the Helios project leader saying “At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows.” Yikes.

Perhaps we Linux zealots should downgrade our expectations even further and simply predict that the upcoming year will be the one when people discover Linux exists and that they have a choice. Hard to see how it can take over the desktop if people don’t know about it.

Happy holidays and best wishes for the new year.

For example, if you can sequence 100 genomes in 10 days at a cost of less than $10,000 per genome, you can walk away with the $10 million Archon X prize.

Then there’s the Automotive X Prize for the fastest vehicle to win a race while achieving fuel efficiency of at least 100 miles per gallon.

The Google Lunar X Prize will appeal to radio control aficionados looking for a challenge: You’ve got until 2012 to get a moon buggy to the moon, drive it around (at least half a kilometre), and transmit pictures back to earth.

All these prizes, and more in development, are brought to you courtesy of the X Prize Foundation. Here’s a lovely YouTube video of theirs with some of the charm of educational films from times past, when the future was still cool.

Popular Mechanics has an interesting article featuring eight contenders at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show which run the economic range from a $3,000 modification for existing vehicles, to a $150,000 concept car full of bells and whistles. The $3,000 mod might actually have the advantage, since one of the criteria for the prize is that it result in a product that lots of people would like to buy. I don’t see a fancy, high-tech SUV in my future, but a $3,000 mod that could be applied to my old Accord to give it better than 42 kilometers to the liter is something I would go for.

Wired did a piece on the prize last month in which they noted that there are already electric cars which can get better than 100 mpg. Has the prize been won before the race is even begun? No, because the criteria include a limit of 200 grams of greenhouse gases emitted per mile travelled, and contestants are responsible for green house gases generated “up stream” — that is to say, electricity generated from coal counts against the 200 gram limit.

May the best (that is, fastest, most fuel efficient, environmentally friendly, and economically viable) car win! While the Automotive X Prize doesn’t have all the glamour of the original Ansari X Prize, the fruits of the research and development by all participants, not just the ultimate winner, will be much more significant for us earth-bound mortals, and for the earth we’re bound to.

Enjoy our little play? Unfortunately, the article on which it’s based is a little short on detail, so I don’t know how revolutionary Frayne’s invention actually has the potential to be. But the simplicity of it is breathtakingly beautiful, one of those things where one wonders why no one thought of it before.

And I wonder as well how much energy could be recovered from all our heating and air conditioning vents alone — enough to power a heater or air conditioner? Frayne may be thinking small, but the implications are definitely big.

And here is a patch for anyone still using Windows 98 or 2000 who wants to update their operating system to handle the new daylight savings time. Microsoft no longer supports these operating systems. I assume it has already updated the operating systems it does still support.

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote of GE planning to create a more energy efficient incandescent bulb, and speculated that they might be motivated by legislation pending in California to ban the incandescent in favour of compact fluorescent (CFL). It turns out that it’s much bigger than that. The EU, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (1,2 ) are all at least considering similar legislation. In Cuba and Venezuala, hundreds of thousands of CFLs have already been distributed, and Change One’s Project Porchlight is distributing tens of thousands of free CFLs in Canada.

But you might wonder how this would necessarily motivate GE, given that they produce energy- efficient compact fluorescent bulbs as well. It may have something to do with price. CFLs have come down in cost considerably since their inception, but it’s likely that they’ll always be more expensive than incandescent. Every CFL requires its own ballast. Given that incandescents have fewer parts, if GE can really create one that is just as energy efficient, they will likely be able to sell them more cheaply.

The question then would be: how long do they last? Would the new incandescents also be able to match the longevity of a CFL? Currently not only are CFLs more energy efficient than incandescent, but they last longer before burning out.

In any event, GE had better be able to demonstrate a more energy efficient incandescent soon, if only to ensure that legislation uses terms and measures which do not refer to specific technologies such as “incandescent” or “CFL.” Otherwise their energy efficient incandescent may have something of an uphill battle changing laws that specifically outlaw them.

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Speaking of light, interesting news with regard to big fricken’ lasers. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is on the verge of developing a laser so big and powerful it reminds me of the phaser of Star Trek fame — the ship mounted ones. They figure they need about 100 kW standard output to use it as a weapon, so the hand phaser will have to wait until the batteries necessary to store that kind of power are considerably smaller. Currently they require a big trailer or 747 to house them, and it would be helpful if the target were to stay still for the several seconds necessary to do damage. This is not a weapon we want to take on the Klingons with just yet. But at 67 kW, they are getting there.

Really the most important part of the equation isn’t the flashy laser bits, but rather the batteries. I want batteries so powerful that not only will my car go for thousands of miles on them, but they will also power the hood-mounted phaser bank. Cut me off, will you? Lock on phasers, Mr. Sulu!

In DRM related news, it looked for a second as though EMI was going to lighten up on DRM restrictions for online music retailers. However, it turns out that they want loads of cash in exchange, and are getting no takers.

Allofmp3.com remains in business and the best deal in online music for now.

1. Difference engine.
2. AI test and work on defeating Nazi enigma encryption during WWII. In 1983, geeks 3 and 4 below received an award named after him, and in 2004 geek 5 was awarded one as well.
3. Created B programming language, precursor to C. Coinventor of UNIX operating system.
4. Created C programming language. Coinventor of UNIX operating system.
5. Played a major role in development of the ubiquitous TCP/IP protocols used by most services on the internet.
6. Founder of GNU, creator of the GNU Public License, arguably the most important name in the Free Software Movement.
7. Founders of Apple Computer.
8. Inventor of the Perl programming language.
9. Microsoft founder. Richest man in the world.
10. Creator of the Linux kernel, still manages that project.
11. Inventor of the World Wide Web.
12. Founders of Google.

 

If you got half them then you’re doing well. Everyone probably gets 9, while few will get 5 and 11, even though Microsoft has actually invented very little, whereas 5 almost qualifies for the title of inventor of the internet, and 11 was knighted for inventing the Web. In a just universe, 5 and 11 would be trillionaires if 9 is a billionaire. Apparently the universe isn’t just. Shocking.

Speaking of shocking, I have created a naked geek calendar, one for each month, akin to the pin up calendars of old. I’ll include a link to it, but first the warning: If you consider pictures of naked people to be adult content, then this is adult content. However, if you like porno featuring naked men, this may disappoint for being too tame. All now warned, here is the link.

Canada as well is feeling the pressure. We’re very naughty for having “fair use” provisions in law and not ratifying the 1997 WIPO (a portmanteau for “Wipe Out Fair Use”) treaty. It appears as though the Conservative government is on the verge of selling us out.

Copyright is essentially under attack. The original idea was that all creative works belonged to the commons, but as reward and incentive, creators would be allowed a monopoly on their work for a limited period of time. Corporate entities want to replace this concept with that of “intellectual property,” where the creator, or those the creator has transferred rights to, own the “property” in perpetuity. It’s subtle, but watch and see. They may succeed. They are also hostile to the concept of “fair use.” I’m not sure we’re at the point yet where civil disobedience should be advocated, but we’re getting there.

1. Charles Babbage
2. Alan Turing
3. Ken Thompson
4. Dennis Ritchie
5. Vint Cerf
6. Richard Stallman
7. Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak
8. Larry Wall
9. Bill Gates
10. Linus Torvalds
11. Tim Berners Lee
12. Lawrence E. Page & Sergey Brin